


too late to come on home

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [73]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Being Lost, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 08:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21051038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: “You look familiar,” the boy says in his strange, haunting voice. “Are you lost?”





	too late to come on home

**Author's Note:**

> Day 15 of October. Prompts were: scarecrows, wandering, woods, near death, punishment, witches, and control.

He does not know how long that he’s been wandering the woods. 

As a child, Link remembers being able to navigate them with ease. He would listen to the whisper of the trees, following the haunting music emanating from the forest’s beating heart. And if he got lost, he would always find himself stumbling back out at the start.

This time, there is no entrance. It feels as if it’s been days. Months. Maybe, even years. Time had no meaning in this place. It was easy to forget. The hunger and thirst only lasted for a short time, and after that the only thing that kept you going was the lingering, bone deep exhaustion. The fear. The need to keep moving, because if you didn’t, the woods would consume you, make you one of its own.

Link has always belonged to the forest. He may have not been born a Kokiri, but the forest was in his blood, surely as any of the other forest children. It makes sense that at some point, the forest would want him back.

The bleeding has stopped, he thinks. His tunic is crusty with rusted blood, and his side does not ache anymore, so it must have stopped.

He keeps moving, one foot after another. Forest things hoot and howl, but he has not feared them in decades. He just needs to reach the temple. After that, Saria will help. He knows she will. But he cannot seem to find the path. The music is gone, the whisper of the trees silenced. Even the bugs are quiet, an ever present hum that he’d taken for granted. Each path leads to another crossroads, and another, and another.

He had thought the forest was punishing him at first. For decades, he was Zelda’s golden knight. He fought for her, dined at her side, took morning walks with her through her gardens, offering her sword, shield, and mind. The palace took him in as surely as these woods once did. They offered him a home, a family, a purpose. But he had abandoned the forest during those years, thinking that it would be as it always was, fae-like and never changing.

He was wrong to think that.

In his absence, the woods have changed. They’ve become a darker place. The mist which once parted for him clings to him like a second skin. The creatures who once fell easily to blade or arrow come for him, again and again.

In his thirty-seventh year of life, Link had heard a rumor that the forest children were dying. No one knew of them before. Hylians feared the woods more than they feared the desert, so they rarely crept into the forest sanctum. But after Link had been made a knight, his brothers and sisters sent gifts. They sang, loudly enough that those passing through the southern tip of Hyrule Field could hear it, pausing to listen before spurring their horses onward.

No one sang anymore. The gifts stopped coming years ago. Even Saria, always tucked away into the back of his head was silent.

He should have noticed. Should have realized that it may have meant something. But he hadn’t, and when he’d gone to investigate, the village was empty. The homes that once housed his friends, his first family, were silent. Apples rotted on counters. Beds lay untouched, blankets coated thickly in dust. The sapling of the Deku Tree slept.

So he had turned to the woods - the only place he could imagine them retreating to in a crisis.

He shivers, back bent with exhaustion. The fog is thick. He wants to sleep.

When he was young, Mido had told him that witches lived in the woods. That they kept demons as pets, and would snatch children who wandered too far. He’d known this wasn’t true, but as a child, he had still feared those witches and their masked demons, the puppets who danced for their pleasure.

He thought that he’d known these woods. Thought that he’d touched every blade of grass, seen every branch, every rock.

He was wrong. He didn’t know these woods at all.

What would Zelda do, he thinks, if he never makes it back? Would she send search parties? Would she venture here herself, or would she merely wait, and then eventually, mourn?

She was older now, gray at her temples and laugh lines on her face, but she loved him. For years they have shared a bed. Shared their meals, their time. Link had given her children when she asked for an heir. He would, he thinks, give her whatever she wanted.

The kingdom suspected, for Zelda never married, but they had never confirmed things. Never made it official. They did not need to, because Link did not want to be a king.

For the sake of the kingdom, she would mourn him. She could send the knights, their ranks swollen with faces of men and women Link has trained since childhood, but somehow, he doesn’t think that she will.

She knew the dangers of this wood, too.

She would pray, perhaps. First to Saria, and then to the other sages. But would they answer? Or would Saria stubbornly refuse her call, as well?

Link drops to his knees. He is so very tired.

He finds himself in a clearing much like the others, but in this one, there are two raised stumps. The place itches at a memory, somewhere deep in his skull, but he can’t quite free himself from the fog long enough to grasp it.

Link is nearly unconscious when he hears the music. It is a wood pipe, the melody achingingly familiar. His eyelids flutter. When did his cheek end up in the dirt?

He lifts his head.

There, on the taller stump, is a boy. He is wearing a tattered orange hat and a tunic made of leaves, and where his face should be is only shadow. He has no nose, no mouth, just a pair of glowing orange eyes.

This too, is a memory. Even now he can recall Navi’s voice in his ear, whispering about what became of the children lost to the forest. She had said that they could be friends, and they were, for a time. He had dreamed, later, of falling moons and that same imp, grinning at him with a different face. A mask. But that was only a dream.

He watches as the boy jumps around to his own tune, the lilting notes of his flute high and reedy. He kicks his legs, taps his feet, laughs to himself in a way that sets Link’s teeth on edge.

Once he’s finished his song, the boy jumps from his perch and lands near Link, peering low like he is inspecting him. Link watches him warily, but is too tired to move.

“You look familiar,” the boy says in his strange, haunting voice. “Are you lost?”

Link can’t find a way to answer him without confessing, so he stays silent.

The boy giggles. “You are lost. I can tell.”

Still, Link does not speak.

The boy stills, watching him, and then huffs out a petulant little sigh.

“Fine,” he says. “Have it your way. When the forest lets you wake up, come play with me.”

Link wants to tell him that he won’t. That he needs to get back to the palace, where Zelda and his children are waiting. Ganon has long been dead, but there are other dangers to be found in Hyrule. He had sworn to protect them. He would not be another monster with no face.

“Please,” he whispers, clawing his way across the forest floor towards the boy’s retreating back. “Show me the way out.”

Slowly, the boy turns. There is no mouth, not one that Link can see, but he knows that the creature is grinning.

“Don’t you know, boy?” he asks, almost gently, head tilting in a way no living thing’s can. This time, when he grins, Link can see it. His voice goes shrill and playful, as if he’s singing Link a song. “There is no way out. Not for you. Not for I. Not til the end of time.”

He cackles, and then he is gone.

Link lays in the dark, in the fog, and listens to the forest.

But there is nothing to hear.


End file.
